Time and Time Again
by MidnightWriter800
Summary: Lily Thomson is an ordinary student at a private school until she is whisked away by a mysterious man known as 'The Doctor' in his magical blue box to save the universe. (First in a series of stories featuring Rupert Grint as an alternate 14th Doctor)


_Time and Time Again _

It had been an ordinary Saturday night so far. Lily had decided against the insistence of her friends to stay home and study for the night. She had a makeup test on Friday and she really couldn't afford to fail another test, or her parents might begin to consider whether an expensive private education was worth the cost.

Lilly grimaced at the sheaf on handwritten notes crammed in her spidery handwriting and sighed. She had been pouring over these notes for nearly an hour now, and lamentably nothing was going in. Maybe it was the thought of her friends having fun without her, maybe it was the stress of the upcoming exam but either way, she wasn't getting anywhere anytime soon.

A knock on the door jolted Lily out of her thoughts and she jumped to her feet. They hadn't been expecting anyone, had they? Probably one of her roommate Maya's many exes come to beg her to take him back, she thought with some annoyance.

Lily looked herself down – at the tousled blonde hair, the fluffy pyjamas and the unicorn slippers – and decided after a moment's thought that she didn't care about how she looked right now and padded over to the door to confront the intrusive knocker, who was becoming more insistent now.

'I'm sorry, she's not he—' Lily started blandly, but froze midsentence.

The caller didn't look like Maya's usual type, not by a longshot. He was a tallish guy, a little under six feet, with a boyish face, blue-green eyes and a mop of ginger hair, with just a hint of reddish scruff on his jawline 'Um, hullo,' he said, looking right at her 'Are you…Lily Thomson?' he asked. He had a British accent, with a touch of the north of England about it.

'Yeah,' Lily nodded warily, looking the stranger up and down. 'Can I help you?' he was dressed like an extra in _Downton Abbey _or some Jane Austen drama – a midnight blue velvet frock coat and a floral-patterned waistcoat.

He frowned a little at the question 'Maybe, possibly,' he admitted after a pause, 'Quick, take my hand. We haven't got a moment to lose!' he said abruptly, and grabbed her hand, leading her into the dorm hallway where a tall blue box had appeared, and before Lily could open her mouth to question was going on –

\- They were inside the blue box and an impossibly large, sterile white room. A low, harmonic buzzing filled the room from every direction, and roundel-shaped panel honeycombed the white walls. In the centre of the room was a large, mushroom-shaped desk split into hexagonal panels, each crammed with high-tech devices which Lily intuited was some kind of control console.

The man pulled a lever on the panel closest to them and a set of huge doors (which were not the blue, wooden doors they had stepped through moments ago, Lily noted) dragged themselves closed. Finally, he turned to Lily.

'Hi, I'm the Doctor,' he said warmly 'This my spaceship…slash time machine. It's called the TARDIS; it's an acronym, but that's not important. I'm an alien, by the way. But don't worry! You're not being abducted, promise! I just need to borrow you to help me fix some anomalies in time.'

'Why me?' Lily said after a moment's hesitation.

'No idea,' the Doctor admitted 'When I was sent on this mission, I was told to find a human female named Lily Thomson, circa the 2010s. You're essential to fixing the temporal breaches.'

'What breaches?' Lily mused.

The Doctor grimaced 'Think of time as one interconnected corridor,' he started 'And each point in history is a room in the corridor. Normally a point in time—each room, is walled off from the rest, compartmentalised—only sometimes the walls can wear in, can crack, and when that happens, bits of one time can become stuck in another, like splinters, and that damages the whole _universe_.'

'And you want _me_ to help you fix it?' Lily asked.

'Yup!' The Doctor enthused brightly.

'I'm in my fuzzy pyjamas,' Lily said.

'Yes,' The Doctor agreed, nodding sagely 'Not to worry. Plenty of clothes in the wardrobe room.'

'I have a makeup test on Friday!' She exclaimed 'I can't run off with a strange man in a magic box!'

'It's a time machine,' The Doctor told her patiently 'We can save the universe and have you back in time for Friday. Promise.'

Lily let out an exasperated sigh 'Oh, what the hell!'

The Doctor grinned broadly: 'That's the spirit!' and he was setting controls at the central console. With a sudden thump and a jolt, the translucent column at the heart of the console began to rise and fall, and the room was filled with a wheezing, groaning sound.

'Welcome aboard, Miss Thomson!' the Doctor beamed, stretching a hand over the console to her.

Lily paused for a moment and then reached across, shaking the hand 'Pleasure.'


End file.
